Amazon!!!!

It occurs to me that talking about the financial aspect of this is going to take up a lot of the upcoming blog entries. I can think of more amusing things to write about, but I made a commitment to myself to be totally candid in an attempt to help other prospective adoptive parents in the future.

Yesterday I hit $1000 in specific fundraising for this adoption. I have more money set aside for this process, but this is money I have somehow come up with specifically for this purpose...in the last 12 days. I'm very proud of this!!! So, for those of you looking to find the money for your adoption, here's what I have done:

1) I completely pulled in the reigns. Any of you who have made the decision to adopt will know that it pretty much becomes all you think about. And so... it becomes easy to say no to everyday things that you might otherwise not think twice about. I have a baby bottle above my kitchen sink. In this bottle I put all of my spare change, in addition to cash which I would have used to buy specific things ranging from a coffee run, to a book, to a new dog bed... And somehow it just adds up like crazy.

2) AMAZON! I made over $100 today selling my used books on Amazon. This was WAY more than I anticipated. It was only 5 books, but it added right up. And I have a gazillion left to get rid of. And the great news of this is that I am making money to put away for this specific purpose and cleaning out unnecessary stuff in the process. So, if you have any books to sell, I suggest you go to amazon.com and open a seller's account right away. My strategy was to find the cheapest book listed and mark my price $0.25 lower. And it worked! Books that just stay listed are doing me no good so I am pricing to sell. This is not rocket science and it is very easy to do. You make way more money on books selling them on Amazon than you do on Ebay. But I do love Ebay. I'll write about that in another entry.

Now, for any of you starting the process, I read a fantastic book last night, in one night which was a very helpful, no fluff, step by step walk through of virtually everything you can think of about the logistics of adoption. Buy it right away if you are adopting: 10 Steps to Successful International Adoption: A Guided Workbook for Prospective Parents by Brenda K. Uekert, PhD.
For my friends and family who are reading this, I know you are bored to tears. Things really won't get exciting until I get my travel dates and that will takes a while, but please stay tuned. This whole experience is so cool.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions that you don't want posted, please e-mail me at adoptinglily@gmail.com

They say there are two ways to look at children - either they are lost or found. I choose to think of them as found. Thank you for joining me on my journey toward finding Lily.